GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



People call themselves civilized but become deaf or unwilling to understand spoken language at certain times. For example, when you ask people to give up their stuff without a fight. Selective deafness occurs which leads to the exhibition of acts of barbaric violence. 

It is fortunate that he is well-versed and very convincing in the acts of barbaric violence. Action speaks louder than words anyway. And a strong gist speaks the loudest. So Selective deafness is not a bad thing for him since he has the strongest fist.

The fight was an efficient use of time for him at the end of the day. He got feats out of it and a lot of high-quality healing pills. There are some other consumables like the explosives but he doesn't care for those. The explosives will be useless in a one-on-one fight with him. He is too fast to be caught off guard by it. He might even be able to kill his enemy before they can bring out the explosive and use it.

He resumed his journey across the arena for a weapon. It is his major goal right now. It will empower him beyond his current level. He knows he is unprecedentedly strong but he also knows he is not perfect. He has weaknesses that can be exploited. He might not be aware of such weaknesses but that doesn't mean they don't exist. The only way to be sure that he remains the strongest is to get stronger. Those that are stagnant become irrelevant. 

Putting his weaknesses aside. There might not be a single person that can beat him, but there's a high possibility of a group of strong individuals ganging up on him. As the child of the plane, he is a verified threat to those that want to become the last man standing.

He is an obstacle that they must eliminate if they want any chance of being the last man standing and everyone that sees him will know the threat that he poses. The black crown on his head makes his threat level pretty obvious. It will not be far-fetched for the kings in this arena to gang up on him in order to eliminate him. 

He could escape from a fight if he were in the real world. Unfortunately for him, he is not. The arena will shrink as the days go by. His mobility will reduce until he has no choice but to fight. So he has to be ready for that eventuality. He can't march towards the 1st zone without a reliable response for what he might meet there. 

In this challenge, he can't run away from any threat. He has to face it, overcome it, and become the last man standing. If he doesn't become the last man standing, then he will lose half of his feats and the last man standing will become the person with the largest number of feats.

That also means he might lose the next challenge too since feats are very important for it. So losing this challenge might cost him two vulnerabilities of the core. He understands his situation very well and is highly motivated to win. The arena spirits also understand and will try to make sure he doesn't win. He can only find surety is more power.

The days went by as the challenge progressed. The external rings starting from the 7th ring were destroyed one for each day that elapsed. The ring to be eliminated is first covered with a miasma of corrosive gas. The gas breaks down everything on the ring both organic and inorganic. Everything on the ring is melted down before the arena is made to shrink into nothingness. The process takes one hour so whoever is still on the ring when the miasma comes gets some time to escape before they are doomed.

Some competitors didn't wait for their rings to be eliminated before they made it to the 1st ring. Actually, most competitors didn't wait for the deadline before vacating a ring. But these few that rushed towards the 1st ring as quickly as possible believed that they could actually win the challenge and be the last man standing. There are some that rushed there just to watch the fight for the winner but they are in the minority.

It could have been baseless or founded confidence, delusion, or simple curiosity to see the cool fights that made these people rush toward the 1st ring. Whatever it is, only those that went there to satisfy their curiosity actually succeeded in their endeavor. The rest had their expectations subverted because all of them had to stop at the 2nd ring. 

They stopped because they couldn't go any further. Something is blocking their path to the 1st ring. This something was created by the sole person in the Zeroth ring. This thing has cut short the progress of everyone who wants to enter the 1st ring. 

They will have to go through what's blocking them if they want to go any further but they are not eager to brave the barricade. Their unwillingness may be due to the fact that they have seen many people try to enter the first ring and give their life for the failure of their efforts.

The person blocking the way wasn't the first to reach the 1st ring. Salvini was the first person to reach the 1st ring. She was lucky enough to be teleported close to it but she didn't go straight for it. She first looted the loot boxes around. She didn't need to see what was inside it to know if it contains loot or not. She can see what will come out of the loot box before she breaks it.

Sometimes, she will break boxes with monsters inside them because she can see that killing the monsters will give her good loot. That happened a lot too. She must be really lucky. That's what she thought. She has no reason to think otherwise. Not everyone is as familiar with the workings of the arena as Soverick. And only one person in the entire competition has earned the ire of the arena spirits by doing something they shouldn't be doing.